


Pray To Her

by GoddessOfGanon



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 01:43:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4502973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoddessOfGanon/pseuds/GoddessOfGanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Zelda redeems past lives for choosing the man she loves over the kingdom she rules.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pray To Her

_“The Terminians have made it clear that they will strike in three days’ time._ We must have our defenses ready to return the opening fire. We should be moving our collected forces to protect the borderlines by the morrow.” Princess Zelda did not know fear as she once did. Declarations of war against her kingdom were once dreaded, and recklessly avoided. Though as seasons passed and her father, long dead, still managed to upturn debts from when he was living, she had learned to take the wages as they came, and hold little close.

                Gathered around her were the representatives of Hyrule’s allied kingdoms, who soberly absorbed her word and followed her hand and she arranged battlements with wooden pawns across a yellowed map of her kingdom, an impressive drawing that took up most of the table before her. To her right sat Ruto, queen of the Zoras, opposite her was Darunia, who kept his hands spread across the table to keep the map lying flat. Across from Zelda, furthest from the others, sat Ganondorf Dragmire, who was fixated on the strand of hair that Zelda hadn’t bothered to tuck behind her ear at the start of the meeting to the end of it.

                A low mirth of wind pressed against the windows, disrupting the near perfect silence of the moments when Zelda lapsed from speech. Her eyes would occasionally follow her hand as she drew a route of strategy on the map laid before her with a finger, though while she spoke they remained fixed on the latticed panes, as the sun sank into the trees and the kingdom below drifted to sleep on a blurry summer evening.

                Nearing midnight, the meeting adjourned, not with the rouse of determination for the upcoming battle, but with the noisy scraping of chairs and exchanged looks amongst the table that said one thing. _One of us shouldn’t be here._ Zelda bade everyone goodnight, spare the set of amber eyes that refused to be dismissed with such detached formality. From her side, the violet eyes of the queen of the Zoras piqued in question to the princess, who remained seated next to her with some measure of hesitance.  “Our fealty is sworn to the kingdom of Hyrule, you know that Princess.  However, it does not sit well with my soldier’s morale knowing they will be fighting alongside the Gerudo. What were the Terminian’s demands, anyhow? Why is there a need for so many soldiers?”             

                “It matters not,” Zelda spoke, sharper than she intended as she stood to fetch a tome to weigh the curling corners of the map. “His demands are irrelevant, made callously. I do not wish to respond in a likewise manner.  Though if you must know, I believe a strong allied presence should be enough to make him withdraw his own numbers. It seemed only logical.”

                The Zora scoffed under her breath, and with little more to say, departed, leaving only two shadows in the room. Zelda didn’t look up from the map, didn’t need to, to know who she was talking to. “I thought you might not come.”

                “And receive no direction for my troops?” The rumble of the Gerudo’s voice seemed to remain in the air after he’d spoken, raising the hairs on Zelda’s forearms.

                “I thought you might not agree to fight, either.” His chair scarped against the flagstone when he pushed his seat back to stand, and his footfalls echoed each time his boots touched the floor. She kept her head bent when he approached, fixing on the map, until his finger hooked beneath her chin to raise her eyes to his. He looked at her with some measure, reading past her dispassionate visage to the tumult he sensed underneath. 

                “Public opinion holds me to be a brute, not a coward. What reason would you have to think me not willing to fight?”

                She dropped her chin and sank into the chair at the head of the table. “Public opinion, I suppose.”

                It was no secret, the disdain held for the Gerudo so communally. Zelda was the only one who had met his eye during the meeting, and the Zora’s words were too loud to go unheard, as she believed she spoke for all at the table.

                “I would not care what the public thought, or the judgement of those who I would fight alongside in your name. They only fear me as the bearer of Power. Maybe they  can see the power I have over you, too.” He leaned forward in the seat previously occupied by a Goron, coaxing from her a smile with a smirk of his own.  

                “You don’t have power of me.” She grinned, not realizing the unconscious pull that had them leaning towards each other, until they were a breath apart. He felt the breeze of her breath against his lips, until it caught in her throat as her eyes darted between the ridge between his eyes and the cleft of his lip.

                “But if I did . . . ” He trailed off, tucked the errant strand of hair behind her ear, and kissed her once, twice. Her eyes widened in shock, though she did not dare draw away, instead leaning forward to the calloused brush of his lips and the trace of his tongue against her own. His hand cupped the back of her neck, gently coaxing her head back to deepen their kiss. Zelda’s eyes began to flutter shut when the air in the room and the passage of time outside seemed to return in the same second, as she all at once became aware of the impropriety of the situation at hand.

                “I-” She began, bringing her hand to cover his at the nape of her neck. “We should not do this.”

                He only looked at her coolly, partially shutting down to the rejection he saw coming. “Because I’m old? Because I’m ugly?” She rushed to shake her head, laid her lips upon his once again with some more semblance to urgency, because she wanted him to know he was wrong. She had been intrigued with the Gerudo since she met him, though she would never dare let herself get this close. She shouldn’t be this close, she thought, even as pressed herself against him, she shouldn’t have let this happen, as she pulled away adversely.

                “Now just is not the time-” His lips moved around hers to the shape of her letters, nearly pulling her in with the same gravity that was only present when he was. It was a dangerous game, being alone in a room with him. Letting herself open up to him.

                “You say that every time.” She drew away from him and blinked in confusion, pulling his hand away from her neck.

                He raised his brow to her again, to the question mark in her gaze. It was what he expected, but not what he wanted. Never what he wanted. “You would believe this is the first time Power and Wisdom have had something more than a sacred bond?”

                Zelda knew her soul was a vessel for the goddess Nayru, for Wisdom. She understood that and she accepted it, though she never thought the same for him. She never thought about herself before, feeling the same inflation under his lips, she never thought about him before, in past lives and this one. Until now, as their eyes were locked but blocked off to communication. “Why do you remember and I do not?”

                “That’s the curse of it, is it not? I could have been condemned to an afterlife where I am forced to remember the time you denied my affections, or I could be fated to relieve it with each rebirth. It is a damnable existence, and I remember why each time, right about now.”  Reaching around her, he traced a path on the map of their battle plans, around the pawn signifying his troop’s march way. “I want to take the Goron’s place on the frontlines. When this war begins, I want to be there.”

                She pushed his hand off the map, her fingers pressing into the inside of his wrist. “If you intend to get yourself killed out there just because I have denied you-”

                “I did not think you were denying me as much as you were delaying me.” He raised an eyebrow, his eyes holding the same question that the Zora’s did earlier. “What exactly are you trying to put off here?”

                Zelda sighed, bit her lip, and succumbed to the defeat. “I am promised.” She stood, holding her hands behind her back to prevent her from reaching for him again. “To the prince of Termina.” It was something she had been keeping to herself. “The prince had somehow smuggled the clause into my father’s will before he died. I had been delaying his advances for so long, intent on keeping my kingdom under my own sovereignty,” She looked at the map in front of her, lined with pawns under her command, prepared to fight over her hand.             

                “Look at me. I thought I could scare off his troops by the sight of some assembled allies on a hill. It all sounds so contrived when I say it aloud. I cannot send them to battle over this. He has wanted me for years, and just appearances will not stop him.”

                “You are not a trophy.” His hands had balled into fists on the table, and a vein had risen in his neck. “You are not some clause for a piece of parchment to dictate.”

“I shan’t think so. But I have realized that there are some paths you are set to take from birth, some sacrifices that must be made to ensure the security of a kingdom.”

                “Zelda-”

                “Please.” Their eyes met again. Hers had hardened while his had softened, and he knew a failed battle when he saw one.

                He stood, clearing his throat in attempt to make his voice sound as impersonal as possible. “Make the engagement official. I was going to withdraw my troops from the battle anyway.” He pushed himself away from the table with his knuckles, clenching and releasing his fists. She sensed something about him had hardened. The shell around him, perhaps. Something that toughed in each life she denied him, made a layer around his heart, until he wouldn’t be able to see it anymore.

                “Ganondorf . . . .” She reached limply for his hand. Even if he hadn’t stuffed his fist into his pocket, the distance between them left no room for such a caress.

                “Goodbye, Zelda.”

                The door swept firmly shut behind him. The room was hushed with an imposing air of finality to the situation, and a mustiness from that finality being impressed so many times before. The forsaken princess sank into the chair at the head of the now empty table, the risen moon casting a pearly glow over her downcast eyes and trembling lip. She rose her hand in an arc to send the stratagem pawns sailing across the room, but the sob that hitched in her throat had her doubled over in the next second, the same hand clapped over her mouth while the other gripped the table’s edge to steady her.

                She lowered herself to the cobblestone floor in a silken heap, her tiara slipping from her head onto her lap. She opened her eyes and took the crown into her hands, eyeing the Triforce engrail with a newfound detestation. Lifting her head to the dusked scene from the windows, she saw the various carriages of her supporters amble over the hills leading from the castle’s gate. Ganondorf’s was not among them. She suspected he had walked.  

                Returning her gaze to her crown, she wiped her tears with the back of a gloved hand and forced herself to her feet. She had prevented casualties, at the very least. In three days, instead of a war, there would be a wedding. And the only causality would be the one of her heart.

 

 _Still, the idea haunted her._ Zelda couldn’t imagine the pain of having to remember past lifetimes.

                Until she began to.

                In a drastic upturn of routine, the princess’s mornings were spent with the prince of Termina, tensing beneath his cold touch while rehearsing the vows she would force herself to spill in front of an audience of their kingdom’s most esteemed emissaries. Her nights were spent with a man whose amber eyes never failed to enrapture her, no matter the time, her position in the kingdom, her age or any likewise inconvenience. She woke as their lips touched for the last time, until her head hit the pillow the next evening and she fell in love all over again. More flashes of memory would come at random. When she took her meals, or when her maids were helping her dress. Those who knew her would say they didn’t recognize her after that. She would shout to be left alone that instant, before collapsing on the floor as the dreams raked her heart and mind.

                It was a cruel game, truly. What she hated most of all was that below the goddesses, the only one to blame was herself. Whatever excuse her past life had made to deny him, whether it be out of fear or inexperience or a boy clad in green, the same shortness of breath would follow her for the rest of her life. The future was laid out in stone, and it would begin in a single morning’s dawn, on her wedding day.

 

* * *

 

The princess of Hyrule made a beautiful bride.

                Several seamstresses had worked on her dress to have it finished in time for the ceremony, though no expense was paid to detail. The cream colored skirts pooled at her feet, a wave cast down from the silken sash at her waist. Her shoulders were bare, aside from a heavy dusting of shimmering powder, which trailed down her arms along with the gossamer sleeves that hid the nail marks Zelda had taken to impress during her sleep.

                Her hair was taken into an elegant bun, strands of blonde inlaid with Pearls supplied by the Zoras, crystals from the Gorons, and a crown that had graced her head in lifetime’s past, as she wondered if it felt as heavy then as it did now.

                Layers of makeup had prevented the bags underneath her eyes from being seen, for the ghostly pallor of her once rosy skin to be masked, but her frown, though chastised, could not be taken away. Not by the prince of Termina or any of the maids who gushed over her apparent fortune.

                “Princess, is something wrong your gown?” Ventured one of the seamstresses, clasping her pin bitten hands in front of her chest. “Do you see something you do not like?”

              For a moment the princess did not speak, thinking her words would come out in a feeble whisper. The strength of her tone surprised her, the truth she realized only as she spoke. “I see centuries wrong with it, actually.” A certain alertness had snapped to her then, as she realized that maybe, for the first time, she wouldn’t be too late. She picked up her skirts in her hands and fled her bedchamber’s, tearing down the hallway of the castle that had imprisoned her for so long. Leaving a trail of petals in her wake, until she discarded the teeming bouquet at the castle gates. She had only one thing on her mind, one place.

                The desert.

 

A horse stolen from the castle stables could only take her so far. She ran until her slippers had sewn blisters into her feet. From there she walked, favoring the beaten paths the castle guards wouldn’t take until they really got desperate. She slowed to drink from streams or pluck berries from a bush, but her feet, raw and cut as they were, never stopped moving until she touched the desert sand. From there, she tore across the land, heading for the fortress outlined against the afternoon sun.

                Most of the Gerudo were in the temple, paying their respects to Din with hours of silent veneration and prayer. She came across only one guard, who immediately drew her dagger before nearly dropping it upon realizing that the woman before her was Hyrule’s princess. “Not anymore,” Zelda had said to the title, before asking where she may find him. The guard nodded towards the desert’s only lake. She followed.

                She saw him. He sat with his back to her, hunched over his seat unmoving among the stagnant waters. Something in her heart swelled, though a certain dread collected sweat against the back of her neck. There was something about breaking an ancient cycle that terrified her, but by no means stopped her. She dipped her toes into the waters and found them warmed by the sun, and a blessing to her sore feet. Gathering her skirts to her chest, she waded into the stream and set for the coracle ahead.

                Ganondorf turned when he heard the splashing, and nearly fell out of the boat at the sight of the woman in white. Her hair tumbled wildly past her shoulders, her neckline had dropped to near indecency, and he couldn’t tell if she was still wearing shoes. She resembled a storm, in the wake of destruction that, not having hit him, was exhilarating to see.

                “Zelda, what have you done?” He whispered once she had stopped at the foot of the boat. He had paled, his hands shoke as he bent to lift her from the waters.

                “What I wanted to.” She beamed, laughter bubbling from her lips, as she secured her arms around his neck as he lowered them into the boat.

                From her tone he perceived this may have been the first time.

 

The boat drifted freely along the waters, in no rush or stir from oars, a lazy progression made that only stopped when one of the boat’s inhabitants shifted awkwardly. Ganondorf had kissed her, of course he had kissed her, and she fell open to him like petals dropping from a dying flower. It was ecstasy. Then it was hesitance. It was new territory for them both, and the words to sort out their fates, be they separate or intertwined from that point forward, did not come easily.

                Ganondorf reclined on his elbows, looking out across the waters, choosing a blank expanse over any hint of regret that may cross her face at his next question.  “What will become of Hyrule? Who will reign over an absconded kingdom?”

                “Someone will have the courage to take the throne.” She replied absently. Truthfully it hadn’t been her first thought, not until her feet had first touched sand. Guilt gnawed at her for it, though she was glad that her crown had tumbled from her head before she had entered Gerudo domain. Ganondorf had withdrawn his alliance with the kingdom, and she would learn to do the same. “I already felt like I stopped being a princess when I began to recall the lives of my past self, how they were ruined by my obligation to Hyrule.”

                “What was that like?” He drew closer to her at the bloom of a hungry curiosity that sprang within him. It was always him that bore the weight of remembering. It was always him that had that lonely insanity in his mind. “For you to remember?”

                She saw that hunger in his eyes, and also the fear. She smiled sadly up at him, covering his hand with her own. “It was always the same. I realized I loved you when it was too late. Or I would not allow myself to love you, for I had a kingdom to think of first. You did not always look the same, but you made me feel the same way.”

                She rested her head on his shoulder, keeping her eyes locked with his as she spoke. “You made me weary. You incited an ache that weighed down every piece of me. I felt exhausted without you around, but also furious, because I had to think, why is it _you_ who does this to me, every time? When did it occur that I no longer had only myself to rely on? When did _I_ become not enough?” She drew in a shaky breath, though she calmed when Ganondorf began to run his fingers through her hair. “I was accustomed to being alone, even among the maximum of company. I never needed anyone, not until you.” He nodded, wholly familiar with the shadow of hopelessness that any affection cast.

                “I do have to think that the act of you remembering is a single blessing from the goddesses.” He said softly, fingers still gliding through her curls. “Though they do seem to have a proclivity to our separation, so I wonder why they chose now to impart such a gift.”

                Zelda’s face soured, which she saw in the reflection of the waters but did not make an effort to hide it. “If Nayru chose my body as the vessel for Wisdom, my life to bear the power of the Triforce, she should have given me the strength to not need you, not in every life I draw breath. I understand we are equal with the goddesses in no respect. We act against their will in more ways than we may even know. But how could they choose this path for us? Why must they so intently keep us apart? I have prayed to them for all my days, but now I scorn them! I loathe their providence!” She bit on her lip to stop further sacrilege from passing her lips, lifting her head from the shoulder of Power.

                Ganondorf dipped his hand into the waters, lifting a lotus blossom from the ripples left by the boats procession across the waters. “You’ll be my new deity.” He vowed, tucking the blossom behind her ear before brushing his knuckles down the length of her cheek. She opened his palm to plant kisses over the calloused skin, impressing a promise with her lips. His grin returned it, as he drank in the image of the woman he would worship for eternities again.

                “Tell me what happens now.” He breathed, arms fastening around her waist, holding her to his chest. She slowed her breathing to match his, tilting her face to the sun as a wave of peace, along with an idea, washed over her.

                She turned in his arms, placing her palms flat against the bench seat on either sides of his face. Her eyes slid from his own, to his lips. “I came here on my wedding day. I would not mind ending it as such.”

                Casting aside oars, he took Zelda in his arms and made for the shore as though they were racing against time, or perhaps making up for what of it had been lost.

 

The orders to arrange a desert wedding need only be told to one Gerudo woman for his sisters to be told in the next second. Ganondorf’s sisters had had short time to question what sort of storm brought him home in such a coarse temper days before, until the answer presented itself in the form of an absconded princess, who intended to wed their king in the same afternoon. It seemed unheard of, debauched and likely impetuous, though maybe there was something about that that made them eager to comply.

                Zelda watched as the nimble hands, which she knew to deftly wield daggers and spears, threaded and stitched the pearly vestment of her tattered gown into an ensemble fit to their own tradition. The bodice of her dress was salvageable, though her skirts, torn by desert and water, were replaced with an ivory pair of loose fitting pants, secured at the waist by a golden belt inlaid with dazzling gems, matching the bands around her ankles. A gossamer wrap was draped over her shoulders to mask the pink stains that had taken to the princess’s skin during her march upon the sands.

                When the ceremony began, Zelda had to bite the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from crying out in joy. When she was presented to Ganondorf, with his hair carefully plaited and his armor shining like a separate sun, she found that she pitied her past selves more than she hated them. They never knew such bliss as this.

                Their feet were cleansed in the same waters over which Zelda had sent damnations to Din. A procession of the Gerudo’s most esteemed warriors led the pair to the balcony overlooking the vast deserts, where the sun would set nestled between the hills and groves of golden expanse. They passed stone pillars on a ruby inlaid footpath to the platform where their eternal promise would be exchanged and repeated.

                The pair sat cross-legged on the raised dais, encircled by the Gerudo women, whose headpieces and gem-studded clothing reflected in the sunset gleam, casting winks like stars that had fallen into the sands.

                They linked hands over a single burning candle, which would be at its wick by the end of the ceremony. Zelda’s eyes fluttered shut as she recited the ancient vows of desert ceremony as they were recited to her. Ganondorf nearly broke tradition to open his own eyes and marvel at how she managed not to butcher a single line of a tongue so unfamiliar to her.

                When they were permitted to stand, hands remaining clasped together, the distance between them was closed with a swift eagerness that opened a feeling of freedom that neither had ever felt before. Wind blew over the sands of time, and as they stepped from the dais, they couldn’t be more proud to be rewriting it.

* * *

 

The afterward festivities sent pressed gunpowder whizzing to the skies, bursting into a dazzling array of colors and sparks that descended upon a night of golden grandeur, where wine overflowed and the sands stirred with endless laughter. The women twisted and danced, drank their share and exchanged smiles that even at their widest, could not rival their King’s, and his beloved wife.

              The new day was nearly at its dawn when Ganondorf, who had refrained from drinking that night so as to never lose the clarity of the day’s perfection, so he would never think of it as a dream, fell once again into silence as he watched the colors of the night reflect in Zelda's eyes, wide and upturned to the stars, which she believed to be made by the souls of those in the afterlife. Somewhere up there were all the bearers of Wisdom who had given up what she had just gained. May they now rest peacefully.

            She sensed her husband's eyes on her and turned in his arms, resting her head on his shoulder. There was a gleam nostalgic in her eyes, relieved, though yearning too. Casting one last glance to the crowd, to the stars, he titled his head and whispered in his wife’s ear, “Come with me.” She could not place the want in his tone, even as she set her own undrunk wineglass onto the table, and followed.

 

_“Does it feel this good every time?” Zelda’s voice shook in delectation, her eyes fluttering open only to have sparks cast across her vision as Ganondorf’s mouth or hands found a region of her body yet discovered, yet revered. Her nails dug into the back of his neck as she arched beneath him, nearly disbelieving that such rhapsody was hers to feel, to share._

_“You still do not remember?” He chuckled, his face nuzzling her neck his tongue tracing the shell of her ear. She shook her head against his shoulder, felt his lips shape into a smile against her throat._

                 “You will.”


End file.
